Skills are a player's trainable abilities that may be levelled throughout their game play. Any given skill can be trained by various actions that relate to the skill. Performing any of these various actions grants the player experience in that skill. Using items such as experience lamps can increase a skill by a variable amount of experience points based on the player's skill selection.

There are 27 skills available to train in RuneScape. Members have access to all 27 skills, while free-to-play players may only access 17 of these skills. However, free-to-play players can train the members' skills up to level 5, with the exception of the elite skill Invention.

Certain skills may allow players to cook, chop downtrees, make fires, use magic, craftrunes, and so on. Some skills complement other skills. For example, logs obtained from Woodcutting can be used for Firemaking, and fires from firemaking can be used for Cooking food. Food can then be used to replenish life points to help in Combat, which can be used to kill NPCs that drop herbs, which may then be used for Herblore. Some herblore potions may, for example, boost mining so players can mine ores to smith with, which may then be used to create nails. Nails can be used in Construction. Altars may be constructed within one's player-owned house with this skill which can be used to further train prayer. The higher the players level is in a given skill, the more resources the player will unlock from that skill to enhance game play.

Achieving higher levels in skills can give players various advantages, such as agility shortcuts, faster cutting of wood, etc. Skills are often contrasted with money, some of which are profitable, and others which do not provide the player with any in game wealth whatsoever.

Training certain skills may be profitable, such as selling logs obtained from woodcutting, selling the fish from the fishing skill, or selling the drop(s) from a slayer assignment. Please refer to the Money-making guide for more details. Conversely, other skills may not be profitable. While some skills may be less profitable than others, the main cause of loss of profit is through a lack of the player acquiring their own materials.

All skills, with the exception of Constitution, start out at level 1. Constitution starts out at level 10, so the player has a fair advantage against monsters. Players can advance a skill to level 99 (except for Dungeoneering, Invention, and Slayer, which can go to level 120); after that, they can increase their experience up to 200,000,000 - but gain no more levels for doing so. A player's combat level begins at level 3. The maximum combat level a player can reach is level 138. A player will appear on the hiscores if they are in the top 2,000,000 players of a skill, and are level 15 or greater in that skill.

Every skill has a unique jingle that plays when the skill is leveled up. This jingle changes with each skill to be slightly more complex whenever the skill reaches level 50.

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Grants players using melee weapons higher accuracy, thus increasing the number of hits dealt to an opponent during any given time period. Since more of the player's hits will be successful, the player's opponent will incur more damage per any given period of time. Stronger weapons also require higher levels of attack in order to equip. Grants access to melee abilities.

During melee, higher strength increases a player's maximum potential damage to an opponent for each successful hit. Stronger members' weapons may also require higher levels to equip. Strength also gives access to various agility shortcuts. Grants access to melee abilities.

Allows players to fight with arrows and other projectiles from a distance and increases a player's chance to hit when using ranged. Ranged weapons, armour and some other items require a certain ranged level. Also gives members access to various agility shortcuts. Grants access to ranged abilities.

Allows players to pray for assistance in combat, such as for stat boosts and partial immunity from attacks. Effects last until the player runs out of prayer points, or turns their prayers off. Can also be used to repair or bless gravestones. With a higher level players can also wear God robes, spirit shields, including the blessed variations, and temple knight armour.

Allows players to cast spells, including teleports and enchantments, through the use of different types of runes. Increases magic-based attack accuracy and reduces the chance for magic-based attacks to hit the player. Grants access to magic abilities.

Allows players to sustain more damage without dying. A players base life points are one hundred times their constitution level. All combat skills train constitution at a rate of 1.33 experience per 10 damage done (with a few exceptions, such as when experience is not gained for any skill in the Stealing Creation mini-game). Grants access to constitution abilities.

Allows players to progress further down the dungeons of Daemonheim, unlocking access to exclusive weapons, treasures, monsters, and areas. Relies on all non-member skills in F2P and all skills in P2P. Gives rewards only accessible through dungeoneering.

Members have access to all 27 skills, including the 17 free-to-play skills, and 10 additional skills, and more items that F2P can't use. For example, Dragon platelegs for defence.. An update has made F2P able to level these skills to level 5.

Allows players to use shortcuts and increases the rate at which energy recharges. Certain pieces of equipment such as the Crystal bow also require certain agility levels to wield. It is also used to enhance several other skills, such as allowing the player to catch multiple fish at once.

Allows players to clean grimy herbs and to make potions which can be used to boost/restore skills.

Certain potions also have other specific uses to players (such as curing poisoning, protecting from dragonfire without an Anti-dragon shield, or restoring health at the cost of offensive stats) and are sometimes necessary for survival. Also the higher the herblore level, the more untradeable and powerful potions the player can make.

Allows players to kill certain monsters using tactics not used in normal combat. Useful in raising combat skills. Has the potential to give very rewarding drops unique to slayer monsters. It is also helpful for killing the Avatar of Destruction and Avatar of Creation in the minigame Soul Wars.

Allows players to grow plants (such as fruits, vegetables, herbs, or trees) in certain patches across the world of RuneScape. Farming is notably very useful for collecting many common and rare herbs for Herblore.

Allows players to build a house and its contents, such as chairs, tables, workshops, dungeons, and more. Every player's house is located inside its own instance, separated from the rest of the game. Portals around the world are used to gain entry into the player's own house, and to gain access to other players' houses, allowing anyone to gain access to some of the very useful, high level rooms and furniture.

Some very popular and useful house features include Teleport Tabs and Portals, storing of many costumes, play-fighting other players, Gilded Altars for huge prayer training bonuses, and much more.

Allows players to track, net, deadfall, snare, and trap animals for their hides, abilities and treasures. Some of the animals caught can be used in other skills. For example, Red Chinchompa and Salamanders can be used as a ranging weapon.

Allows players to summon familiars and pets to enhance game play in both combat and non-combat skills. Certain familiars can also hold additional items, allowing players to hold more than 28 items, and allows for an expanded pet list.

Allows players to disassemble many in game items in order to break them down into components used in creating new contraptions. These contraptions can benefit the player in a number of ways, including upgrading and increasing the damage of a weapon.

Elite skills require two or more regular skills to be at a certain level in order to unlock the ability to begin training them. They contribute to a player's total level and experience, and show up in the stats interface. Elite skills have a level range from 1 to 120. As with Dungeoneering, they need to be levelled to 99 to be able to equip the max cape, and to 120 to be able to equip the True Skill Mastery cape. They also feature a different experience to level ratio compared to regular skills. Elite skills are not intended to replace regular skills, instead existing alongside them.

Experience, commonly abbreviated as Exp or XP, is a measure of progress in a certain skill. It is generally obtained by performing tasks related to that skill. After gaining a certain amount of experience, players will advance to the next level in that skill, which can result in new abilities, items, and other achievements. Players can earn XP (experience) by training skills, completing quests and participating in various Minigames or Distractions and Diversions.

It is possible for accounts with less than 10 Constitution to exist. In the early days of RuneScape Classic, rule-breakers would be stat-wiped, meaning all their skills would be taken back to 1, including Hitpoints, the predecessor to Constitution. When RS2 was released, many of these accounts here banned. As of today, these accounts are extremely rare.

Accounts may also have less than 10 Constitution if they were created during the period where players chose a class when the account was created. Depending on the class chosen, it was possible to have a Hitpoints level lower than 10 (while starting with other stats boosted over 1), and this would remain if they never trained their Constitution level. In this case, this is extremely rare.

Accounts may also have less than 10 Constitution if they were created during RuneScape Classic and did not level it. This is because the required experience for level 10 was raised for RS2; therefore, characters who had not trained hitpoints in RuneScape Classic did not have enough experience for level 10 Constitution.

As of today, it is still possible for stats to be reset. If a user is to commit a serious offence, then unrelated skills may be wiped in addition to the exploited skill. An example of this would be: A user is boosting (using bots) their combat level. In this case, all combat related skills (Attack, Constitution, Strength, Ranged, Magic, etc...) may be reset.

As part of our promised commitment to stamping down and stopping cheats in RuneScape we have developed a new system to automatically detect people using macro/bot software to gain stats unfairly.

It clearly says in our rules that using software to automatically play the game for you and raise your stats for you is cheating! This will not be tolerated. It is just not fair on the players who play the game honestly and get their levels fairly.

Our new system is extremely efficient and accurate, and in the last 24 hours we have already identified nearly 2000 players who have been cheating in this way. We also believe that we will be able to identify all future offenders and will continue modifying and improving our detection software to do so. From this point on if you use a macro or use a modified version of the RuneScape client, it is almost 100% certain that you WILL be banned or erased.Since these people gained their stats/items unfairly we have unfortunately had no choice but to completely wipe the stats and inventory of the approximately 2000 people who we have caught using macro/bot software. It seems obvious that these players should not be allowed to keep what they did not gain honestly in the first place.

If you are one of the people who we stat-wiped then whining and making excuses to us won't help. Our new system is designed to have a 0% rate of false positives, and we KNOW you were cheating. The stat-wipe is irreversible, so if you want to get your stats back then the only way to do it is to start playing the game fairly, and EARN your way to greatness like everyone else has to.

Click here for a complete list of all the people who have already been stat-wiped. We expect to catch more people at it over the next few days. I hope this proves we are deadly serious about stopping this cheating in RuneScape.